Wind energy is one of the most sustainable and accessible forms of energy on earth. Wind energy is desirable in today's economy as it is a renewable energy source that is pollution free. Additionally, there are many parts of the country that wind energy is very abundant making it an attractive power source in those areas. Another advantage of wind energy is that it is one of the lowest priced renewable energy sources. In the current political climate, wind energy offers one of the most cost effective alternatives to fossil fuels providing an alternative to our countries fossil fuel addiction and increases our energy supply diversity.
Traditional wind energy conversion systems offer high working reliability, no fuel costs and no pollution. Some of the challenges of traditional wind energy systems are the ability to manage altering wind speeds and still effectively convert wind energy to mechanical or electrical energy and a high initial investment for construction of a wind energy system. As is know in the art, the amount of energy in the wind is proportional to the cube of the speed. Traditional turbine or rotary style windmills create an amount of energy proportional to the area it covers when the blade rotates. This has presented problems for those conventional designs. In areas where wind energy is consistently higher traditional rotary style windmills can effective, however most geographic regions do not offer an ideal environment where wind energy is produced at a constant. These conventional rotary styles have difficulty when winds are below a certain speed. Furthermore, conventional rotary style windmills have inherent inefficiencies as during operation a backpressure of the rotary blades exists which drives the overall efficiency lower. The maximum efficiency of a conventional rotary windmill is approximately 44%.
Accordingly there is a need for a wind energy conversion system that utilizes an alternative construction to rotary style that increases the efficiency of the energy conversion and has the ability to accommodate a greater span of wind speeds and still effectively convert the wind energy.